VIA shows new form factor

VIA Technologies has shown some quite interesting stuff this year and it's quite a shame that we haven't seen many of those concepts in retail, but once again managed to stun us with its announcement of the new Mobile-ITX form factor. The new form factor is 50 percent smaller than Pico-ITX and it basically fits in the palm of your hand, so this is something that will certainly have a bright future in niche markets.

The new Mobile-ITX measures 6 by 6 centimeters and it is shows how small an embedded industrial PC can actually be. The new form factor aims at portable networked devices for medical and military segments, but we are positive that it can find its purpose in regular everyday use as well.

It has a low power consumption of up to 5W and consists of CPU module card and an I/O carrier board so developers have a full flexibility when it comes to I/O options and the final product functionality. The CPU module has CPU, chipset as well as memory segment, while the second I/O carrier board has bunch of features like CRT, DVP and TTL display outputs, audio, IDE, USB 2.0, PCI-Express and bunch of other ports.

VIA plans to show its first commercial CPU module based on this form factor in Q1 2010 and it will surely be fun to see what developers do with it.